” Recent news reports have suggested that the hard line taken by Tea Party and other conservative Republicans in the House in the budget and debt ceiling battles may be producing a backlash among party supporters and donors who are concerned about the political impact of the government shutdown and a possible U.S. default on its debt.

But to whatever extent that pushback may be happening, it’s a point of view not shared by rank-and-file Republicans. Just 18% of Republicans believed their leaders were paying too much attention to the Tea Party, up slightly from 13% two years ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last week. Most Republicans said the party’s leaders were either paying the right amount (40%) or too little (24%) attention to the positions of the Tea Party.“

” Broad majorities continue to oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria. Last Thursday’s announcement that the U.S. would aid the rebels has not increased public support for action, and majorities of all partisan groups are opposed.

Overall, 70% oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria; just 20% favor this. Opinion is little changed from December of last year (24% favor) and support is down slightly from March, 2012 (29% favor).”

” National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.”

” It’s not just Pew. This Department of Justice report makes embarrassing reading for those who spend their time trying to make it appear as if America is in the middle of a gun-crime wave. The headlines:

Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011.

Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011.

For both fatal and nonfatal firearm victimizations, the majority of the decline occurred during the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002.

Visually, the decline is particularly striking:

Lest you think that category an anomaly : Controlled by race , sex , region , and even non-fatalities doesn’t matter . The trend is the same . Down , down , down . Even school shooting deaths are down 33% since 1993 , despite what the media would have you believe .

” Ever since last week’s defeat of new gun control measures in the Senate, advocates have talked up the possibility that public outrage could turn a short-term loss into long-term victory for their cause.

Maybe not, new polling suggests.

While more Americans (47%) reported a negative reaction to the Senate action than a positive one (39%), the poll, done by the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that the kind of strong feelings that build political campaigns mostly lay on the pro-gun side of the debate.

Those who said they felt “very happy” over the Senate action significantly outnumbered those who called themselves “angry” – 20% to 15%. Among those who had a negative reaction to the Senate action, most called themselves not “angry,” but “disappointed” (32%). Those who felt positively about the Senate’s action split almost evenly between “very happy” and “relieved” at 19%.

That finding reinforces a point that political operatives with long experience in the gun control debate often make: The gun rights side of the debate includes more people with intense feelings about the issue.”

” All that money. All that effort. All the sermonizing and bloodcurdling imagery and still, Americans don’t seem to be evolving quickly enough on the environment.

A new poll by Pew Research Center, for instance, finds that a wide majority of Americans support building the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Canadian oil to refineries in Texas. Sixty-six percent of Americans favor finishing the pipeline, with only 23 percent in opposition. Strong support cuts through every political distinction — other than “liberal” Democrats.

Among those who see the irrefutable scientific evidence of global temperatures rising, only 42 percent believe that most of it should be attributed to human activity. In fact, when you break it down, 23 percent of Americans believe that natural patterns in the earth’s environment are heating the earth, and another 27 percent don’t believe there is any solid evidence of warming at all. The more appropriate question would be: Do you believe in man-made global warming? The answer: Less than half of Americans would say yes. That, even after the unrelenting cultural, educational and political bombardment we’ve all had to endure on the topic.

And though 33 percent of Americans believe that global warming is a “very serious” problem, that number has declined by 6 points since October 2012.”

” Pew Research has a new State of the Media 2013 report which finds that MSNBC’s output contains far more opinion than news. This chart shows the balance at all three cable networks:”

” The methodology Pew used was to survey stories and categorize them based on the percentage of information vs. opinion. Any story which contained 25 percent opinion or more was labeled commentary/opinion, while a story with less was labeled “factual reporting.” ”

” Is American ready for a strong third party? If so, what kind–what ideology? Right? Left? Center?

One thing is for sure: Across the board, people are mad. According to a January survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 53 percent of Americans think that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms. That is the first time in the history of the Pew data, we might note, that a majority has felt so threatened by its own government.

Meanwhile, according to the same Pew poll, a mere 26 percent of Americans say that they can “trust the government always or most of the time,” while 73 percent say that they can trust government “only some of the time,” or that they can “never” trust it.

Such findings don’t seem very favorable for incumbents, or for the establishment in general. And so, looking at these data, one might have thought that President Barack Obama would have had a tough time winning re-election last year. But of course, Obama was lucky enough to be challenged by a man who seemed to be even more a part of the establishment, Mitt Romney.”

” According to the study, we are now back to 1969 levels with respect to median net worth in this country. A large part of this is the housing crisis we’ve yet to recover from, which cost the middle class 18% of its net worth. The news isn’t much better with respect to median incomes, which have dropped to $26,364, setting us all the way back to 1999.

And as middle class incomes declined, the debt-load among the middle class has increased “significantly.”

In a nutshell: those of us in the middle class earn less, are worth less, and owe more. Meanwhile, during this same period of time, the wealthy increased their wealth by an unbelievable 71%.”

” It’s hard to see how press coverage of President Obama’s re-election bid could have gotten any more biased, but a new report shows the media managed to outdo themselves the week before voters went to the polls.

The Pew Research Center‘s latest analysis puts hard numbers against the claim that the press went out of its way to get Obama re-elected.

According to the report, after months of positive press, “Obama’s coverage improved dramatically” in the crucial final week of the campaign.

In fact, 29% of the stories about Obama that week were positive and just 19% were negative. At the same time, a third of the stories about Mitt Romney were negative, and just 16% were positive.

When it comes to bias, MSNBC is in a league of its own, Pew found. It ran zero negative stories about Obama and zero positive stories about Romney in that last week. “